Ivana Trump’s Memoir Could Make You Feel a Little Bit Sorry for Donald Trump Jr.

Ivana Trump,“basically the First Lady,” according to Ivana Trump, has written a book, out this week, called Raising Trump. Despite what the title suggests, the story is not a slapstick misadventure about teaching Donald Trump, president of the United States, how to be an adult. It‘s a memoir mainly about raising their three children, Don Jr.,Ivanka, and Eric.

The portrait of Donald Trump that Ivana paints in interviews promoting the book doesn’t come off as intentionally malicious; she just depicts her ex-husband in the tradition of the business dad trope, like the fathers one has met in Elf or Hook or Liar Liar. As she told Amy Robach of Good Morning America, “He was a loving father, don’t get me wrong, and he was a good provider, but he was not the father which would take a stroll and go to the Central Park or go play to baseball with them or something. It was only until they were about 18 years old [that] he could communicate with them, because he could start to talk business with them.”

No, the most eyebrow-arching moments available to the public thus far seem to star a baby Donald Jr., the eldest Trump son and faithful defender of his father throughout his election and presidency (only recently has Junior begun eschewing the spotlight as well as Secret Service coverage). Like here, during divorce proceedings, as told to the New York Post:

Her husband called that afternoon and told her to bring Donald Jr. to
his office immediately. After spending 20 minutes with his eldest son,
Trump called his wife and said, “You are a bad mother. I’m keeping
Donald Jr.”

Ivana was furious, but this tough lady, who was born and raised behind
the Iron Curtain, kept her cool.

“Keep him,” she said. “I have two more to raise.”

Ten minutes later, Donald Jr. was back in her arms in their penthouse
in Trump Tower.

“I knew Donald would not know what to do with him,” she says. “It was
hurtful, but I could not be intimidated.”

And then, as she told GMA, there was the time that the president protested to naming his firstborn after himself. “I said, ‘Why not?’” she remembered. “He said, ‘How about if he’s a loser?’”

She won in the end, though whether his father’s fears about Donald Jr.’s success in life were unfounded is up to the reader to decide.

In an opening excerpt from the memoir, Ivana gives props to her sons for being family men and tag-teaming the family business, but she spends triple the word count on her star daughter, Ivanka. Ivana agrees with many critics that Ivanka is the one that helped inure Donald Trump to the American people:

Ivanka is a marvelous mother and wife; founded her own apparel,
jewelry, and shoes business; authored two books (her most recent one,
Women Who Work, I believe, was inspired by me); is now the assistant
to her father, the president of the United States; and is actively
working to improve the lives of women and children. I think Ivanka
played a big part in Donald’s victory. Voters looked at her and
thought, I like her. I trust her. She loves her father, so he can’t be
that bad. Who knows? One day, she might be the first female—and
Jewish—POTUS.

A mom dares to dream. Anyway, this is what we know about Donald Jr’s childhood thanks to the woman who raised him, a day before her book comes out: unconditional love was not a guiding force in the Trump household, and Trump’s Art of the Deal is not babyproof.

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